Today, enterprise resource planning (“ERP”) software typically utilizes the Extensible Markup Language (“XML”), which is a universally accepted format for representing structured data in textual form. XML is widely adopted in many enterprise databases, most particularly in databases and applications connected to the World Wide Web. The manipulation and exchange of structured data (e.g., “search and match”) can often be challenging as the data is traditionally represented in platform or program dependent document formats. XML provides a set of rules and guidelines for designing text formats for such data. These XML test formats can be unambiguous, platform-independent, and extensible.
Some existing ERP applications also have the ability to allow customers to select various options when purchasing an item. For example, a customer of an ERP user can order a laptop or desktop computer, and can have the option of choosing a monitor size, a memory size, a mouse, an installed software suite, etc. Today, many ERP systems that manage the customer's order will create multiple identities to store each configuration ordered by different customers. In the aforementioned example, the ERP application may create an identity for each laptop or desktop configuration. As more and more configurations are ordered by customers, an item master list can continue to grow, occasionally resulting in an enormous item master list.